Customized Jagmaster for John "Gary" Sweeden

John's Jagmaster Guitar Concept

The Project

John supplied us with a Jagmaster body and a new Warmoth neck. He had a concept for a complete guitar that included delay effects and an analog Theremin Etherphone. The project included changing the bridge and trem, completely new pickup arrangement, new controls, onboard electronics and a custom designed pickguard. When all that body work was done, we installed the neck and did our proprietry "Players Complete" pro-setup on the guitar. John is pictured testing the completed guitar for the first time in our shop in December 2007. Checkout his custom made steel trem arm attached to the Bigsby B5 licensed vibrato. You can see a closer view of that further on down this page.

Design Work

We started the project by doing a computer layout of the main features and their positions. This enabled us in to design a pleasing shape with accurate cuts for the new pickguard, The plan is also used to determine new areas for cutting the body routes.

When we were happy with the layout for the pickups, controls, pickguard and body routes, we create machining files that define how the router will cut the new body cavities and drilling. The custom pickguard machining was also created at this time.

Body Routing

We started the actual work by routing the guitar body front cavities and new holes for the bridge and pickguard.

We filled the original tremolo hole so that we could drill holes for the new Schaller roller bridge we are going to be installing. The filler was a piece of Mahogany cut on our router to exactly fit the hole. It was a perfect fit the first time.

You can see two new cavities routed in the body to accomodate the extra controls and a Strat switch at the upper horn.

Pickguard Cutting

You can clearly see the holes all routed and ready for the controls, pickups and bridge to be installed.

The overall shape in this case didn't differ very much from the original style of the Jagmaster pickguard. Changes were made in the area of the bridge and the controls were extended at the lower left side.

Final Assembly & Setup

Here's the guitar almost completed, but for a few knobs.

Pickups

The pickups are all made by Seymour Duncan and came from our own stock as follows:
Bridge: Antiquity P-90
Middle: Antiquity II Jaguar
Neck: Seth Lover Humbucker
This eclectic mix of pickups makes for a very flexible instrument with tones including Surf sounds, biting blues and smooth jazz. The five position strat switch in the upper horn provides mixes of the bridge & middle or the middle & neck pickups, for some very different tones.

Onboard Effects

The guitar is enhanced by the addition of a delay unit from MODboard. The unit can produce a wide range of echo and delay effects with just two knobs and a switch. This works especially well for the middle pickup surf sound!

Theremin Aetherphone

You can see a copper antenna sticking up from the lower horn of the guitar. This antenna is part of the Theremin device we also installed. The Theremin is a touchless musical instrument that is played by moving your hands in proximity to the antenna, thereby changing the frequency of the oscillation that is output. Originally invented in 1919 by Russian inventor Leon Theremin, the device has been used in all kinds of performances from from stage, movies , rock and pop.

The Theremin can be switched in to circuit and played through the delay effects described earlier to make some really cool sounds.

Bigsby Trem & Roller Bridge

The Bigsby trem cannot be matched for its subtle control, but is notorious for causing guitars to go out of tune. We like to use the Schaller roller bridge with a Bigsby, it seems to work well for keeping tuning under control. Here John wanted to include the gold trem with a chrome bridge in keeping with the eclectic nature of this instrument.

Note the homemade trem arm provided by John. The arm is a weldment of steel with an added clock gear for fun (John also loves to collect clocks).

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